It's a game, again, Eilonwy thought. Just another game, to them, the pieces set in place, a bluff made and called, and they already know the outcome. Even as the witches turned, she saw them glance knowingly at one another, for Taran was fumbling at his collar with reluctant, clumsy fingers.
"Farewell, my owlets," Orddu sang cheerily. "Unfortunate you couldn't strike a bargain with us, but that, too, is the way things are. Flutter home to your nest, and give all our love to little Dallben."
It was like watching a dream you'd had before, each second unfolding as you knew it would. The inevitability of it made her angry, somehow, wrathfully indignant on Taran's behalf, and when he called to them to wait, Eilonwy cried out and caught at his arm at the injustice of it.
He hesitated, and his palm closed over her hand and squeezed it before pushing it gently away. His pain smote her: a wave of grief as though someone he loved was dying: the self he could be, with that brooch. With one swift, anguished glance he begged her not to make it worse.
"There is—there is one thing more," Taran called after the women, and Orddu turned halfway back, a greedy gleam in her eyes.
Taran gulped, and stood straight and tall, the way he always did facing down an adversary…the way that wrung her heart, though Eilonwy had never admitted it, and did not now. It was the wind, that was all, that stung her eyes and made her blink, and curled her hands into clenched fists against its cold emptiness.
"The brooch I wear," Taran said, low and hoarse. "The gift of Adaon, son of Taliesin."
Orwen and Orgoch both stopped now, and turned, and Orddu stepped toward Taran like a fox with its eye on a hen's nest. "Brooch?" she said. "A brooch, indeed? Yes, that might be more interesting. Just the thing, perhaps. You should have mentioned it sooner."
Taran lifted his eyes, and his gaze met that of the creature facing him. For a long, strange moment, it seemed to Eilonwy that the boy and the crone stood frozen, two creatures in a silent, separate circle. All around them upon the little hillock the wind blew and the horses breathed; further out in the marsh, birds twittered and frogs sang. But within that still center there was nothing but a striving of wills, one that might go on for moments, or hours, or years, with no regard for the passing of time outside its edges.
There they were, Taran and Orddu, three paces and an unfathomable world away, enspelled in a space between spaces. If they were speaking to each other, Eilonwy could neither see nor hear them doing so. She wanted to call out, to shout at Taran to come back, and knew, somehow, that he would not hear her. He was beyond her help, beyond anyone's, alone beneath the weight of an unbearable decision.
And then, moving as though in a dream, he unclasped the brooch from his collar and dropped it into the bony hand held out to him.
The spell broke. "Done, my chicken!" Orddu's voice rang into the silence. "The brooch for the Crochan!"
Taran stepped back, a little clumsily, as though he'd been pushed, or as though something that had been holding him up was suddenly knocked away. His face twisted in exhaustion and sorrow, and when he straightened again it looked painful, but he glared at Orddu, clenching his fists. "The Crochan is ours," he declared. "Is this not so? It is ours, to do with as we please?"
Orddu nodded. "Of course, dear fledgling. We never break a bargain. It's yours entirely, no question of it."
"In your stables," Taran said, "I saw hammers and iron bars. Will you grant us the use of them? Or must we pay still another price?"
Orddu tilted her head at him curiously. "Use them, by all means. We'll count that as part of the bargain, for you are a bold chicken, we must admit."
He turned from her, then, and looked at his friends, and Eilonwy wanted to cry out in sympathy at his expression, but she made no sound…only followed without a word as he moved toward the stable.
When they entered the little shed he was already standing with his face to the wall, white-knuckled hands splayed against the stones, his head bowed. She wanted to go to him, to throw her arms 'round him and tell him it was all right, that he didn't need any old brooch, that he'd done well enough without it before and would again, and that magic or no magic he was…was…oh, what was he, why were there no words for him? None, at least, that would allow themselves; they tied themselves in knots inside her mouth and locked her lips shut. Somehow they tripped up her feet, too, so she could not even run to him as she wanted, but stood stupidly in the doorway, embarrassed, quivering on the verge of tears.
It was Fflewddur who went to him, who laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder, and Gurgi, who squirmed beneath his arm to nudge him beneath the chin, so that Taran had to push away from the wall with a soft, bitter laugh as he turned to face them.
"I understand what you were all trying to do," he said quietly. "Each of you would have given up what you treasure most, for my sake." He took Fflewddur's hands and gripped them tightly for a moment, looking the bard in the face. "I'm glad Orddu didn't take your harp, Fflewddur. I know how unhappy you would be without your music, even more than I without the brooch. And Gurgi…" He turned to the woeful creature and took his shaggy head in both hands. "You should never have tried to sacrifice your food on my account.
"And Eilonwy," he said, turning to her, and her feet unfroze themselves and stumbled into the dark stable until she clutched for his outstretched hands. His warm grip caught and steadied her, and when she looked into his face he was Taran again, just Taran, his own plain non-magical imperfect self, but looking somehow older, and dearer, and…
A gasp and a sob broke from her throat before she could stop them, and he looked concerned, and then a little exasperated, and even that made her heart ache with the sweetness of familiarity. "Don't cry," he chided, shaking his head. "Your ring and your bauble are much too useful and beautiful to exchange for an ugly Crochan. How could you think to give them up?"
She stared into his face, mute. I didn't do it for the cauldron, she thought wildly, you stupid assistant pig-keeper. I did it for you; we all did it for you.
Perhaps he saw something of her thoughts in her face; he swallowed, and his hands seemed to hold hers a fraction longer, perhaps, than was needed to make his point. He held them, in fact, until she let go herself, pulling away in sudden confusion, her heart pounding. Was it even true? Would she have given up her bauble, her ring, just so that he could keep that brooch…that brooch that she wasn't even sure she liked? That magical trinket that turned him into someone else?
No. Not for that, but to spare him the grief he felt at losing it, which wasn't the same thing at all. And maybe not even the right thing, all considered, but…maybe one could do the wrong thing for the right reasons, sometimes, and maybe that was what the witches had meant by even Arawn had to have his chance…
"All of these things are doubly precious now," Taran said. He stepped back and gestured to all of them, his voice grown steadier, more determined. "And so are you, the best of true comrades. Come now, friends." He bent, and seized an enormous, long-handled hammer that leaned against the wall. "We have a task to finish."
They took up other implements hanging from hooks and scattered about, and followed him back to the yard. The three enchantresses still stood watching, as though to see the end of some planned performance. Taran planted his feet, raised his hammer high, and brought it down upon the Crochan.
With a great, ugly clang, the hammer rebounded just as Eilonwy and Fflewddur, following his lead, added blows of their own. The handle of the maul she wielded reverberated painfully in her hands, sent a shock up her arms and made her teeth clatter together, but the iron head bounced from the cauldron without leaving so much as a dimple. Taran cried out in anger and tried again, and then again, while Gurgi banged furiously with an iron bar. Not a mark or scratch marred the black surface.
Orddu called to them. "You should have told us, my goslings, what you intended! You can't do that to the cauldron, you know."
They all glared at her, Taran too out of breath to answer; he wiped his face on his cloak and leaned heavily on his hammer. "The cauldron belongs to us!" Eilonwy flung back. "Taran has paid more than enough. It's our business if we want to smash it!"
Orddu shrugged. "Naturally, you're quite welcome to hammer and kick it from now until the birds start nesting again. But, my silly goslings, you'll never destroy the Crochan that way. Goodness, no, you're going about it all wrong!"
Eilonwy huffed, none too inclined to believe anything they were told, but the others all paused, even Gurgi, who was perched upon the lip of the gaping mouth, preparing to crawl inside it.
"Since the Crochan is yours," said Orddu, "you're entitled to know how to dispose of it. There's only one way, though very simple and neat it is."
"Then tell us!" Taran cried. "So that we may put an end to the evil thing!"
Orddu ambled forward, and laid a gnarled hand upon the rusty iron. She looked thoughtful and impassive, as though she remembered a time the cauldron had been more than an instrument of death, but was unconcerned by what it had become. "A living person must climb into it," she said, motioning to the open mouth, "and when he does, the Crochan will shatter. But there's one disagreeable thing about that. The poor duckling who climbs in will never climb out again alive."
Gurgi, still balancing upon the edge, yelped in terror. He sprang away from the cauldron as though flung, sprawling head over heels in the tall grass and then rising to shake his fist at it. The others looked at Orddu, dumbfounded and dismayed. The blood drained from Taran's face.
"Yes," Orddu continued calmly, "that's the way of it. The Crochan only cost you a brooch, but it will cost a life to destroy it. Not only that, but whoever gives up his life to the Crochan must give it willingly, knowing full well what he does.
"And now, my chickens, we really must say farewell," she announced, turning to head back to the cottage. "Orgoch is dreadfully sleepy. You had us up so early. Farewell, farewell."
The other two, who had remained eerily silent since the moment Taran had given up the brooch, turned to join her, disappearing into their cottage. But Orddu paused at the door at his frantic cry.
"Stop!" Taran ran in desperation and despair. He stumbled to a stop before Orddu, gripped her grimy robe to keep her from leaving them. "It cannot be…there must be another way. Tell us, please…is there no other way?"
Orddu looked at his hand clutching her robe, and gently took it in her own. Though her gnarled claws shook with the tremors of age, there was no mistaking the power of her grasp. Taran instantly dropped the fabric with a gasp, and Orddu patted his wrist gently. "None," she said, for the first time with a hint of pity. "None whatever, my chicken."
And she dropped his hand, and stepped inside, shutting the door in his face.
Numb with disbelief and horror, they all stared at the door, at Taran standing stunned, facing it. He was as still as though he'd been turned to stone. Then suddenly he lunged toward it, flung himself against the heavy planks in fury.
Eilonwy winced in sympathy as he battered at the door, shouting for Orddu. It wouldn't do any good, but she could not blame him…she herself would like to hit something, smash something, and she would have beaten the cauldron again, but for knowing that futility would only add to their grief.
Taran left the door and ran to the window, but no speck of light was there to illuminate the cottage interior; indeed, even the daylight seemed barred entry by a black fog. He sank to the ground wearily at last.
"When Orddu and her friends say farewell," Fflewddur said, "they mean it. I doubt we shall see them again, and that's the most cheerful piece of news I've had this morning."
Taran dropped his hammer, and stared straight ahead numbly. "Surely there must be something else we can do. Though we cannot destroy the Crochan, we dare not part with it."
They all looked at the thing in disgust. "Hide it," said Fflewddur flatly. "Bury it, and I should say as soon as possible. You can be quite certain you won't find anyone eager to jump into the thing and break it for you."
"No," Taran answered, "we cannot hide it. Sooner or later Arawn would find it, and all our efforts would have been useless." He came to stand next to the cauldron. "Dallben will know," he said. "He alone has the wisdom to deal with the cauldron. Gwydion himself planned to bring the Crochan to Caer Dallben. Now that must be our task."
"I suppose that's the only safe thing," Fflewddur acknowledged. "But it's a cumbersome beast. I don't see the four of us lugging it along some of those mountain trails."
"We shall have to do our best," Taran said. "Besides, we have the horses. Come, let's hitch them to it and see how we get on."
It was no easy thing to get the horses to cooperate as they experimented with ways of lashing the heavy, cumbersome Crochan between them. It proved too heavy for them to carry outright, their gear not being made for the job, and at last Fflewddur and Taran were obliged to stand before and behind it, holding it steady as the horses dragged it over the ground.
Eilonwy stood at Melynlas's head, where Taran had set her as guide, and waited for him to decide which direction they would go. He looked anxious as he scanned the land about them, and she saw his hand reach for his throat before he remembered there was nothing there to reach for.
"I think we must circle north around the Marshes," he said at last, "until we reach the moors again. It's longer, but the Marshes are too treacherous. Last time, Adaon's brooch guided me. Now," he sighed, as they coaxed the horses into a slow walk, "I'm afraid I'd lead us to the same fate as the Huntsmen."
Fflewddur brightened. "That's rather a good idea! Not for us, of course, but for the Crochan. Sink the beastly pot in the quicksand!"
Eilonwy huffed. "No thank you! By the time we found quicksand, we'd be sinking along with the Crochan. If you're tired, we can change off and you lead Melynlas."
"Not at all, not at all," the bard grunted, struggling to help the cauldron over a clump of weeds. "It's not as heavy as all that. In fact, I find the exercise bracing, quite invigorating. A Fflam never flags!"
There was a melodic pop from his harp, but they all politely ignored it, and Eilonwy thought cynically that perhaps there were times it was better to entertain lies than admit the truth. After all, when reality was so dismal, what was so wrong with pretending, if it helped you get through?
The cottage disappeared behind them, a relief that served to lift her spirits a little, but it was a wan and short-lived cheer. Foot by foot, step by step, they toiled on over bracken and sharp marsh grass, turning this way and that to avoid low-lying, damp areas, following Taran's shouted directions as he and Fflewddur labored to steady the cauldron.
The bleak landscape crawled past, changeless. Eilonwy felt a crushing sense that they were not moving at all, merely pushing the land backwards beneath their feet, always looking ahead to more of the same, as though it remade itself continually a few steps ahead of them. The cauldron jostled and swung and bounced, and she heard more than one muffled curse as it banged into someone. Fflewddur predicted bitterly that his legs would be black and blue by the evening.
"The wretched thing catches every hump of dirt and tussock of grass to hang itself upon!" he grumbled. "And then comes crashing down like a dirty great battering ram. I do believe it does it deliberately."
"It does seem to have a mind of its own," Eilonwy said. "I swear I'm trying to find the smoothest paths, but it's like hunting for pearls among pebbles."
Taran spoke not at all, except to give occasional instructions. Eilonwy felt his exhaustion seeping out like cider from a leaking casket, and feared she knew the reason. As she had warned, the brooch had sustained him unnaturally, and now its loss multiplied his weariness.
Nevertheless they drove on at Taran's insistence, with few rests, until evening found them just on the edge of the moorlands. Its coarse grass and prickly gorse was hardly more hospitable than the wetlands, but it was, at least, proof that they had covered distance, which Eilonwy had been tempted to doubt. Unroping the cauldron, they tended to the horses, and found seats on the ground. Gurgi handed around food from his wallet as the sun slipped beneath the cold horizon. A wedge of pale moon broke through the mist above.
"Couldn't we light a fire?" Eilonwy suggested, finding a relatively soft patch of grass to sit. "It's so damp, and there's enough dead brush about."
Taran looked around doubtfully. "We're too much out in the open. A fire would be visible leagues away, and could attract unfriendly eyes. I wish we could — it would make things more cheerful —but we'd better not."
"Well, now," Fflewddur said lightly. "There are other ways to cheer! And goodness knows we've need of it. How would a bit of music sound?"
"That depends on you, I suppose," Eilonwy remarked, and he gave her a half-smile as he pulled his harp from its case and set it on his knee.
She settled deeper into the grass as he fingered thoughtfully at his strings, trying out various melodies as one might try various stockings to find one that fit. But even the harp, which usually guided him to something fitting, now seemed affected by the atmosphere.
"Odd," Fflewddur mumbled, as his third attempt at a cheery tune fell flat. "Seems it's as dour as the rest of us. I'd swear that old kettle's like a bad mood we're hauling 'round. Beastly thing." He sighed, and set to a rather random, meditative plucking, soothing in its way.
Taran had sat a little distance apart. He was huddled in his cloak, staring at the Crochan, his gloom hovering like a cloud about him. Eilonwy watched him in concern. All his confidence and assurance, even what he had possessed without the brooch's assistance, had disappeared. The bravado of the boy she knew seemed swallowed up by the gaping black maw of the cauldron, or drained from him by the loss of the magic he had embraced.
She could not bear to see him so. Like he's forgotten who he is, she thought. That brooch turned him into someone else, and now that it's gone, he can't find his way back to himself.
The swift burst of insight made her almost angry. Not with Taran, exactly, but…oh, with everything else: with the Crochan for making them all so grim; with Ellidyr, whose taunts had driven Taran to foolishness; with Adaon, for dying and leaving them here and giving Taran that brooch; with Orddu, for taking it from him; with fate, for putting them all here in this position.
We didn't all try to spare him just to see him lose himself anyway.
She rose and walked over to sit with him, and when he did not acknowledge her she crouched between him and the Crochan so that he could not see it. "Taran."
He made no answer, so she reached out, laid a hand on his shoulder. "I realize it's no consolation to you," she said, "but if you look at it in one way, you didn't give up a thing to those enchantresses. Not really."
He met her eyes then, in amazement and disbelief, and she felt, again, the depth of what he thought he had lost.
"I know," she said, "you did exchange the clasp and everything that went along with it. But, don't you see, all those things came from the clasp itself. They weren't…oh, Taran, they weren't you! Not inside of you. They were like a…a disguise you'd put on…all glitter and gold, but they couldn't change who you are!"
He looked almost angry as his eyes dropped, resistant. Oh, how could he not see it? She leaned back upon her heels and regarded him.
"I think," she said slowly, "it would have been much worse giving up a summer day. That's part of you. I know I shouldn't want to give up a single one of mine. Or even a winter day, for the matter of that."
His glance flickered up, and she wondered if he thought of hiking with her through white-crusted drifts in a diamond-faceted world, of drinking hot cider by the hearth after a blood-tingling snowball fight. "So, when you come right down to it," she declared, "Orddu didn't take anything from you; why, you're still yourself and you can't deny that!"
He huffed a bitter acknowledgment. "Yes. I am still only an Assistant Pig Keeper. I should have known that anything else was too good to last."
Only an Assistant Pig Keeper! Her anger flared at his obstinacy, at his relentless indulgence in self-pity. She wanted to shake him, and harsh words sprang to assist, but in her exasperation she glanced over his shoulder and saw Fflewddur, sitting apart and watching them.
Something in his expression made her choke back her annoyance. She couldn't quite read it, whether it was concern, or affection, or wistfulness, or some combination of all, but he nodded at her briefly, an encouragement to keep on.
She sighed, and counted to ten, and took a breath. "That may be true. But as far as being an Assistant Pig-Keeper is concerned, I think…I think you're a perfectly marvelous one."
Taran snorted in derision. "No, none of that," she admonished him. "Believe me, there's no question in my mind you're the best Assistant Pig-Keeper in all Prydain."
His glance on her was wry, but at least he was meeting her eyes again. "How many do you suppose there are?"
Her mouth twitched. "I'm sure I don't know. But that's beside the point. Not a single one of them would have done what you did today. In fact I dare say there are few…few princes, or warriors, or shepherds, or smiths or…or anythings that would have done it."
He shrugged, though his face looked softer. "I could not have done otherwise, not if we were to gain the cauldron. That was what mattered."
"But that's it, you see," she persisted. "You put what really mattered above what you wanted. Just as…just as Adaon did!" She realized it the moment she spoke it, and sat up straight, dazzled with clarity. "He didn't want to go after the cauldron. But he didn't let his own desires get in the way of the quest. You are more like him than you think."
"And yet not worthy of his clasp," he mumbled.
"Whoever said that?"
"You just did!" His eyes flashed resentfully, but she welcomed it; let him get angry! Anything was better than that listless apathy.
"I did not," she returned hotly. "He thought you were worthy of it, and who am I to gainsay? But those marks, that symbol…"She scratched the three lines in the dirt and stared at them. "Taran, you said it yourself. He already had all those things. Knowledge, truth, and love aren't a…a costume. You can't put them on like a piece of jewelry." A swipe of her hand, and the lines were gone. "You've got to earn them. And once you've done that, you won't need a brooch to be special, just as Adaon didn't need it. Once you've got them that way, no one can take them from you."
He was silent, but she no longer felt surrounded by his resentment. He reached out slowly, and re-drew the lines she had wiped away. "Orddu said they were interested in things as they are," he said faintly, "I believe now they are concerned with things as they must be. Adaon knew there was a destiny laid on him, and he did not turn from it, though it cost him his life.
He raised his head, and his voice grew stronger. "Very well," he declared. "If there is a destiny laid on me, I shall face it. I hope only that I may face it as well as Adaon did his."
She sighed a little, glad that he was rallying, but feeling that somehow he'd missed the point. You silly Assistant Pig Keeper. It wasn't destiny that made you give up the brooch…you did that all on your own.
"Just don't forget," she added out loud, "no matter what else happens, you won the cauldron for Gwydion and Dallben and all of us. That's one thing nobody can take away from you. For that alone you have every reason to be proud."
He nodded, staring at the ground, and whispered, "Yes. This much have I done."
He said nothing more, wrapped in his thoughts, and she made herself be satisfied with this, rising and making her way back to the space she'd claimed.
Fflewddur continued to pluck quietly at his harp as she returned and sat nearby. "How is he?" he murmured, low.
Eilonwy pillowed her head on her arm and wrapped herself in her cloak. "I don't know," she said honestly, after a moment of thought. "He knows he did something splendid and that there's honor in that. But he's still just…exquisitely sorry for himself."
"Mmm." The bard hummed a melancholy little tune. "It isn't really the brooch, you know. It's what he thought it would make him. It's almost as though he's mourning a death, and it's a hard thing…letting go of the person you wish you could be."
"I'm sure it is" she admitted. "But it seems to me it's more useful to look what you actually are in the face, square on—the sooner the better, so that you can get on with making the best of it."
"That's easier for some of us than others," Fflewddur pointed out; he spoke gently, but his fingers fumbled a little on the strings, and a discordant note marred his chords for an instant. She was silent, thinking of what he'd told them of his hopeless attempts at studying, his humiliating bardic trials.
"You have the advantage," Fflewddur went on, "of always having been satisfied with who you are. Oh, I know," he added, seeing her about to argue, "you weren't always happy with where you were. But you've never wanted to be anyone or anything else, have you?"
"I don't…" she began, and paused, ruminating.
I am Eilonwy. Daughter of Angharad, Daughter of Regat. Princess of Llyr. Enchantress-in-training.
"No," she sighed, "I haven't."
"Well, then," said Fflewddur, as if that was that.
"But it doesn't matter," she argued. "I mean, it's nice and all, to be satisfied with who I am. But even if I weren't, what good would it do to wish it away? It can't be changed.
"You're a king, and it doesn't suit you," she went on, warming to it. "You wanted to be a bard instead…so you went off and did it, because what you do matters as much as what you were born! And I know that's true, because even that silly harp of yours believes it! Have you ever noticed it never breaks a string when you call yourself a bard?"
Fflewddur paused, his mouth open, and blinked. He looked at his harp, and then at his own hands, and back at the harp again, obviously stunned. "Well," he muttered, "by the…I'll be…Great Belin."
"But you're still a king, too," Eilonwy pressed, relentless. "You didn't stop being one just because you took up harping and wandering. And no one's ever said you couldn't do both, have they? We all are what we are, but that doesn't mean we can't be more. It just means we can't be any less." She looked over at Taran, still huddled a little away, his back toward them. "I just wish I could get him to realize it."
Fflewddur huffed out a rather overwhelmed chuckle. "Oh…I expect you'll get through to him one day." A moment later she heard him whisper, almost inaudible, "Fflewddur Fflam, a bard of the harp." There was a moment of silence, and then a jubilant, muffled chortle, and a rippling series of harmonic harp notes.
Well, she thought, as she turned over and buried her face in her elbow, at least one of us is going to sleep happy.
But she could not help smiling to herself at the sound of mellow harp notes plinking into the black night, like tiny drops of sunlight fighting the dark.
